Bentley Systems, makers of MicroStation and every imaginable software for the infrastructure industry, finally came through with an IPO. The Bentleys had been flirting with an IPO for ages, offering it and withdrawing it, then settling into a quasi-public company that would revealed certain aspects of their business (revenue, employees) but not others.
The timing was never right.
This year, everything changed. The pandemic threw conventional business practices out the window, workplaces changed and the workforce disbursed, thousands of business failed or were in jeopardy and entire industries found themselves in an existential nightmare (airlines, hotels, trade shows, restaurants…) and, inexplicably, IPOs became a thing.
There has been more money raised in IPOs so far this year than ever, more than in the dot com boom.
(Picture courtesy of WSJ, source: Dealogic)
The wave started to build in 2016 ($24 billion) and grew ever year until it inexplicably took off in 2020 (already at $94.5 billion by September). Time to strike, I would have said if I were a Bentley brother.
It may be too early to tell, but in the short term, the Bentley IPO has proved to be a smart move, going from initial offering of $22 a share to $33.49, a 52% increase in one day for the lucky investors. At the end of the week, it closed at $34.79, down from its high earlier in the day of $35.12.
Who are the investors? The stock is available only to Bentley employees, the 4,000 or so, most of them in near the company headquarters in Exton, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia.
The IPO offers a chance for liquidity for employees of Bentley, as every employee is now a stockholder. The IPO puts the valuation of Bentley at $5.7 billion initially and at $8.7 billion by the end of the first trading day, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal.
By comparison, Bentley’s chief competitor, Autodesk, is valued at around $50 billion.